


Sleep

by Servalan



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e06 The Cloud, Episode: s07e01 Unimatrix Zero Part II, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 10:09:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20833718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Servalan/pseuds/Servalan
Summary: Chakotay helps Kathryn after a difficult away mission. Set after Unimatrix Zero Part II, a fix-it of sorts.





	Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> For Manalyzer who initially beta’d but I changed the entire end to surprise her so all mistakes are mine.
> 
> CBS/Paramount owns these bad boys. I just write very thinly projected stories onto them. I love you JVC, don’t come after me if you’re reading this. :D

She heard him before she saw him, arguing with the EMH and pushing past him to stand before her. She saw his eyes take in her newly regrown hair, the scarring on her face, the stiff fabric of her medical gown. She sat up a little more and winced at the pain along her spine. 

“Commander?” 

“Captain,” he said, giving her a little smile, “I’m pleased to see you awake and more like yourself.”

“Well at this rate all of us are going to have Borg implants, hmm?” She took a sip of her coffee.

“You say that as though it’s a bad thing,” he said, eyes twinkling. 

“Was there something you needed?” 

“I’m checking you out of sickbay.”

“Well the doctor won’t like that,” she said and looked up at him both confused and intrigued.

“Well I pulled rank. Captain’s orders,” he said and winked. 

_ What was he up to? _

=/\=

To her surprise, the doctor let her leave without a fuss. The commander helped her walk towards their destination, gently catching her when she stumbled. She was glad most of the crew was on repairs; the last thing she wanted was them to see her lurching about in this almost but yet not quite human state.

“Your office?” She asked with surprise as they reached his door. Of all the things she suspected her first officer of, encouraging her to work right now was the least of them.

His smile widened deeper. “Go in and see for yourself.” He punched the keypad and she walked through the doors.

Her slippers immediately sank into sand, her feet encased in its warmth. A small beach lay in front of her, with the waves of the ocean crashing onto the shore just a few meters away. The sun was setting, rays of majestic oranges and crimsons shooting out over the deep blue horizon. A gentle breeze caressed her battered face, a hint of salt lingered on her lips.

“What’s all this?” She asked, her voice barely a whisper. 

“Tom and Harry helped me. Something Tom had been working on for awhile in his own quarters to surprise B’Elanna. Now they’re finishing up installation there to help her. Unfortunately the doctor won’t let Tuvok out of sickbay and I have to agree with him.”

“You’ve built a mini holodeck.” She said instead of the question she wanted to ask: How did he know this was the place she’d ever felt most at peace? She’d never discussed her quest to discover her spirit guide with him. She would not violate his trust and tell him what she should not, not on New Earth, not on Lake George via the holodeck, not after finding out her fiancé had moved on, not before the test flight of the slipstream drive. And yet somehow he knew. Another layer to a man full of mysteries. 

“The range isn’t much but I thought it would be more restful. You’ve been through a trauma that few have experienced and come back from.”

He pointed off to her right and she saw a canopied bed, streams of silky lilac billowing softly in the wind.

“Oh Chakotay,” was all she could say. She was going to say it was too much, until he walked over to it, pulled up a matching lilac nightdress with a light copper shimmer running through it, and handed it to her. It balanced the line between what she wore on New Earth and what was in her drawer in her quarters. Neither would now be appropriate, but for reasons light years apart. 

Now it really was too much.

He held up a hand, anticipating her protest. “Go put this on. I know how much you hate the Starfleet issue medical gown.”

He wasn’t wrong so she complied. “This isn’t holographic is it?” She asked and he chuckled softly.

“I see they didn’t take your sense of humor,” he said and left her to change. 

=/\=

She placed her hand on the bed and climbed in, wiping her feet free of sand from the damp towel he’d thoughtfully placed there. She realized the gown itself would have cost him at least a week’s worth of replicator rations. But there was no point in reproaching him for doing what he clearly loved. She couldn’t ask him to be any less than he was.

He came back through the door and it closed behind him, exposing the hallway briefly before disappearing into the coastline. He nodded at her and walked behind the canopy. When he did not reappear after a few minutes, she sat up and twisted her head around to look for him, trying not to cry out when her spine protested, screaming in the places the metal clamps once had their hold. 

She found him standing awkwardly a few meters behind the bed, looking at a monitor he’d tried to disguise in cliff bank. He saw her and shrugged. “The only way I could get the doctor to agree with this plan was if I strictly monitored your recovery.”

“Well you’re not doing it from there,” she said and pulled a couple of pillows towards her from the other side of the bed, creating a barrier between them that would allow her to maintain some sort of decorum. The truth was, her head hurt, her entire body ached, and she was just exhausted. She needed to sleep and maybe hearing his calming voice would help.

He didn’t hesitate to walk over to the bed, but did pause before climbing up to sit up against the headboard. “I really thought you’d say you were fine and next week we would all pretend nothing had happened.” He appeared to be joking, but she knew better.

She rolled flat on her back and looked upwards at the holographic stars that were peeking through the night’s nascence. It seemed so strange that just a few days ago she’d lain upon a table as the saws came down, the needle protruding from...

“Captain?” He looked at her with such concern that she must have been grimacing, thoughtless, really, after years of keeping up an impassive mask. She noticed her body trembling, no, it was shivering, and it wasn’t from the cold. He’d seen to it that the temperature was perfect for her, just as she described a peaceful day at Lake George. She wrapped her arms around herself and remembered to breathe. 

“It’s interesting, hmm. You know you’re going into a situation that is unfathomable. They teach you all about hostage situations, train you in dozens of captive scenarios, effectively strip you down to your naked core to prepare you for anything. But it’s all irrelevant. Nothing can prepare you for the Borg.” She let out a small sigh.

“It was a reckless plan and I knew it and yes it paid off but…” She faltered again.

“I knew Tuvok would insist on coming with me. And when B’Elanna volunteered I knew it was the right decision.”

“I was never more angry with her when she did that,” he said. “Or more proud. But I still maintain the plan was ludicrous. No one goes willingly into an assimilation chamber.”

“I would.” She said definitively. “I would do it in the place of anyone on my crew. And that’s what we were looking at here, eventually. This plan gave us a fighting chance of causing real change in the collective. I had to do it.”

“I know. That’s why I ultimately let you go.”

She heard what he said but it didn’t quite register as she thought about the screams she heard around her, that she had read about the people that remembered everything but had no control. They may not have taken her mind, but she had to prostrate herself voluntarily.

“You start to think about it and wonder what the hell it is you’re really doing and we got off easy Chakotay and the only reason I can think of was that she had some agenda, of getting me to be the next Locutus or…” she waved a hand around, failing for words, and then remembered what he had just said. 

She rolled over on her side, ignoring her body’s protests, and looked up at him. “Why did you let me go?”

“We both know I wouldn’t have been able to stop you.” He looked from her face down to his hands, which he’d clasp together in his lap.

“But we’ve had our disagreements before, about things even less,” _ personal_, she was about to say, but stopped herself, “critical. But this time, you just let me go.”

“Because I knew I might not ever see you again and I wanted your last memories of me to be fond ones,” he answered, his eyes reaching hers once again, except where they usually shone with a fierce passion and an undercurrent of desire, now they were only full of compassion. Without breaking eye contact, he removed the pillows she’d placed between them. 

“Here,” he said, lowering himself further down on the bed so that he was lying next to her. He put one arm gently behind her back and lifted her face tenderly with the other, placing her cheek on his chest. Her hand moved of its own accord, resting now on his belly. He covered that hand with his, carefully stroking her fingers. His skin was slightly warm beneath her, a pleasant contrast to the cool breeze above.

She’d allowed herself to indulge in the fantasy of being in bed with him only twice, once on New Earth after he’d built her a bathtub and once again the night before they engaged the slipstream drive when she’d nearly asked him to stay. This wasn’t how she’d imagined it, but she was so tired, so unbelievably worn down to her bones, and his voice was so soothing and...

“Sleep Kathryn,” he said.

_ He’d built her a holodeck. _

And so she slept.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I will still never buy that anyone willingly goes into an assimilation chamber, but it might make sense for Kathryn to do it if she truly believes it is in the place of her crew. I absolutely hated that she, B’Elanna, and Tuvok were fine in the next episode and that trauma doesn’t come up again. (I don’t want to hear that they weren’t actually assimilated due to the inhibitor because yeah, they physically were and were *aware* during it.)
> 
> But hey, they get to be in bed together now, eh? :D
> 
> As always, comments are extremely welcomed!!!


End file.
